Recording Law for Employers & Businesses in Wisconsin

Wisconsin lets you record any conversation you take part in without telling the other person, provided you are not doing so for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act. The rule is in state law at Wis. Stat. § 968.31, which provides that a person acting under color of law may intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication where the person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception. The same one-party consent rule applies to persons not acting under color of law, except where the interception is done for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act. That covers in-person chats, phone calls, video calls, and text messages alike. The key statutory language is: "For a person acting under color of law to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, where the person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception." The Wisconsin Supreme Court spelled out how the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy framework works in State v. Duchow, 2008 WI 57, 310 Wis. 2d 1, 749 N.W.2d 913, where it said whether a conversation is protected depends on whether the speaker showed a reasonable expectation it wouldn't be overheard. If you're part of the conversation and not using the recording to commit a crime or tort, you can record it under this rule.

If your smartglasses capture only video without audio, Wisconsin's wiretap law does not apply. The statute only restricts intercepting the "contents" of a wire, electronic, or oral communication. Capturing silent video does not acquire those contents, so it falls outside Wis. Stat. § 968.31. There is a separate, narrow law—Wis. Stat. § 942.08—against using a surveillance device to peek at someone nude or partially nude in a private place, but that statute is limited to voyeuristic conduct and does not apply to general workplace recording scenarios. So video-only recording is unrestricted under the wiretap statute.

Federal courts covering Wisconsin protect your right to openly record on-duty police performing their duties in public. The Seventh Circuit ruled in ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012) that recording such interactions is First Amendment activity. Wisconsin is in that circuit, so the same protection applies here as binding circuit precedent. The recording must be open and not interfere with police operations. State law already allows one-party consent, so recording yourself during a police interaction is clearly legal when you are a party to the exchange. Recording others' exchanges with police in public may also be protected, but courts look at the specific facts—volume, location, whether anyone tried to keep the conversation private, and other Duchow factors—before deciding whether the exchange had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Wisconsin has no dedicated biometric privacy statute and no law that requires extra consent to collect or store biometric data such as voiceprints. The only biometric-related provision in Wisconsin law is inside the state's data-breach-notification statute, Wis. Stat. § 134.98, which treats voiceprints as "personal information" only for post-breach notice purposes. There is no Wisconsin law that says you must get written consent before capturing a voiceprint or that you must publish a retention/destruction policy for voice data. So under current law, the one-party consent rule covers recording a voiceprint during a conversation you're part of.

Not every conversation in a public place is fair game. Wisconsin's wiretap law hinges on whether the speaker showed a reasonable expectation the conversation wouldn't be overheard. The Wisconsin Supreme Court set out six factors in State v. Duchow, 2008 WI 57, 310 Wis. 2d 1, 749 N.W.2d 913, for oral communications only: how loud the speech was, how close other people were, whether the speaker took steps to keep it private, whether anyone needed special tech to hear it, and where it happened. A quiet, hushed chat in a corner of a crowded café can still be private even though it's in public if the speaker’s conduct and the setting otherwise indicate a reasonable expectation of privacy. If the speaker tried to keep it private, recording it without consent risks breaking the law. The statute defines a protected "oral communication" as one "exhibiting an expectation that the communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying the expectation."

Imagine a retail employee wearing smartglasses records a customer who loudly refuses to leave after being asked. The employee is part of the conversation, so one-party consent applies under Wis. Stat. § 968.31. The aisle is public, the speech is loud, and no one lowers their voice or moves away from others. Under State v. Duchow's six-factor test for oral communications, the customer likely had no reasonable expectation of privacy here because the volume, location, and conduct point away from a private expectation. The recording would be legal. If, instead, the same customer pulled the employee into a back stockroom and spoke softly, the employee should not record without consent—because the location, volume, and conduct now point to a private expectation under the Duchow factors.

Wisconsin’s wiretap statute does not create a special carve-out for recording inside a home or private office. The same one-party consent and reasonable-expectation-of-privacy framework applies everywhere. If you are a participant in a conversation occurring in your own home or a private office, one-party consent applies just as it would elsewhere. Recording someone else’s conversation in a location where the speaker exhibited a reasonable expectation of privacy under the statutory definition could still trigger liability under Wis. Stat. § 968.31; location is simply one factor in the Duchow totality-of-circumstances analysis, not a categorical rule. Separately, Wis. Stat. § 942.08 can restrict use of a surveillance device in a private place, but only when used to observe a nude or partially nude person without consent, not general dispute or incident recording.